Off to Cozumel 
Bus to Playa del carmen, Quick and nice. Found a nice lunch place next to a forested area, the cafe had nicely built around some large tree trunks, so that they could continue growing above the roof. Miranda spotted an unknown large rodent of some kind.. grackles wandering around.

Ferry to Cozumel was fast and easy, $13 each. Cozumel has been a little less "Annoying" than Cancun. We struggle every meal to find something More to eat than greasy Cheesy stuff, but will survive :)

There are several Giant 12 story cruise ships that stop by and dock here each day.. . . that's a bit much. ..

We stayed our fist night $35 at hostelito, it was adaquate, but wifi was weak, no filtered water, and no breakfast. So, we've now moved to a economic hotel Hotel Plaza Cozumel ~$50/night where we get solid wifi/water refills/ and a good solid healthy breakfast buffet.

We went scuba diving today, 2 dives. I paid for a dedicated Dive master so I could take my time with my ears. I managed to get down but it took longer than I hoped. Both times surfacing I also had bloody noses.. and I'm still recovering from head-pressure pains several hours later, so we'll take tomorrow off diving. Hopefully It gets better again.

-Joe

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Cancun 
We arrived in Mexico last night around 7:30pm, hopped on the bus to downtown and found our hostel without much trouble. From there we went out to find dinner, but by then it was already after 9. So, we just ate at the restaurant attached to the hostel. Unfortunately, it's looking like finding vegetarian options here is going to be a bit tough, but we've done all right so far.

This morning we went out for a walk to explore the area. We didn't see much of interest. We did find a small taco place that even had a "vegetarian" section of three different type of tacos. Those were pretty good. We even missed the hardest part of the raining (which still wasn't exactly a drenching rain). In the afternoon we headed to the beach. There we mostly just walked around checking stuff out. We did find a public beach access. It was super windy and cloudy, but the water was still crazy blue and there were pretty decent sized waves. I can see the appeal of the beach. It was pretty nice. We found dinner around the time it started sprinkling again then eventually caught the bus back to the hostel.

Cancun has been pretty uneventful for us, but tomorrow we're headed to Cozumel where we can hopefully start some fun activities.

-Miranda

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Starting Another Trip 
On Monday we leave for Mexico! We're flying down to Cancun. The plans are to stay there for a couple days then take a bus, then a ferry to Cozumel where we'll do some scuba diving. So, we'll start updating the blog regularly again. It will definitely be nice to be in some warmer weather for a bit.
-Miranda

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We Moved! 
Ever since we got back from our trip we've been looking for a new place to live. We both enjoyed the house near Port Wing and living on 40 acres, but it was just too far from town. We kept finding ourselves having to drive to Duluth and the hour drive was just getting to be too much. Especially in winter when it gets dark earlier and deer seem suicidal.

So, we looked around Duluth and weren't having much luck. We then decided to make a drive out to Montana to visit Pat and Nancy and then continue the drive to Washington to look there. Again, we didn't have much luck, so back to Minnesota we went.

Eventually we found a place not far from Pike Lake. It's a bit farther out of town than we were hoping, but it's on 4.7 acres on a dead end road, which is great for the kitties. Right now we don't really have furniture, but it will be great once we get things set up better.

-Miranda


The house.

The kitchen. This is the only room that's really put together.

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Home! 
We only stayed in Bangkok a few nights. Our intention was to do some sight seeing, but it never really happened. We did some shopping, but that was really it. Our last night in the hotel, we had trouble sleeping anyway, but at 1am, the toilet started bubbling. When it wouldn't stop, Joe went and talked to someone so they moved us to a different room. We finally fell asleep. The next day we were hoping to go to Wat Pho and then come back to the room to nap and shower. Since the toilet was disgusting we asked if we could stay past check out time so we could nap. They would not budge on it. So crazy. So, no nap time.

Anyway, Sandra's flight was leaving at midnight. We decided to just head to the airport with her and hang out in the arrival area to wait until we could check in. After saying goodbye to Sandra we tried to nap, but were pretty much unsuccessful. Around 3am, we headed to the check-in counter which looked completely different than it did when Sandra had checked in. Delta completely took over the area. We waited in line to talk to a security person who asked us the normal "Who packed your bags", "Did anyone give you anything" etc etc. After we got past that, we waited in another line where we finally got to check-in and check the bags. We then walked to immigration, where we waited in line again. After that, we went to security. No line there really. I guess immigration took longer than security, so that was quick.

Once we were in the airport, we walked for a while towards our gate. Then waited in line yet again to go through more security. Here they patted everyone down and looked in our carry on bags... What would have changed from the time we went through the first security to there is beyond me. Then we waited in line to get on the plane. It took basically 2 hours.

Our first flight was 6 hours to Tokyo. Once there, we got off the plane, went through security again with our carry on bags (again, what changed since we got on the plane?) then found our gate and hopped on that plane. That flight was 9 hours. Woohoo! We were able to sleep a little on the first flight and even less on the flight from Tokyo to Portland.

Once in Portland, we had to get our bags to go through immigration and customs. No problems there. The officer was very friendly. We chatted a little about the trip while he processed stuff. Customs was no problem. He just looked at the sheet, asked if we had food and off we went to recheck the bags and find our gate. There we had a couple hours of sitting before we boarded the plane.

We arrived in Minneapolis at 5:30pm. It was a full 24 hours of traveling, arriving 12 hours after we left (because of the international date line). Mom and Papa picked us up. We stopped for dinner at Good Earth and then headed home. I don't think we're going to have too much trouble with jet lag because not really sleeping made it easy for us to sleep even though our bodies thought it was 11am, not 11pm.

We were awake again at 7:30am. So we didn't really sleep in. We're heading to the house today after running some errands. So nice to be home.

-Miranda

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